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The Tragic Muse (Penguin Classics)

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In an interview, Vladimir Nabokov once spoke of the distinction Russians draw between a genius (such as Tolstoy), and a mere "talent", and the example Nabokov gave of the latter was Henry James. Nabokov never did rate James highly (nor Thomas Mann, Hemingway and many other undoubtedly great writers). Nabokov was of course mistaken. Henry James is one of the true geniuses of literature. His capacity to portray nuances of character through subtle changes of light and shade has never been equalled.

The later James style is notoriously dense, elliptical and difficult to read. And yet through this density, the Victorianisms of the language spoken by James' characters, the important - often critical - things that are only half spoken, and sometimes never spoken, James reveals characters facing moral and personal dilemmas of a kind that seem startlingly immediate to us. James' characters are always complex, rarely do what we expect them to, and are often as frustrating and intriguing as any "real" people.

The Tragic Muse is a lengthy discussion of the role of the artist in society, and the choices - sometimes hard choices - people make in becoming artists and leaving the conventional world behind. James certainly would have been conscious of these issues from his own career. And yet The Tragic Muse is often very funny, with very sharp, witty dialogue, amusing characters and an engrossing story.

I agree with the previous reviewer, who described it as an overlooked masterpiece. I rate it as highly as, say, The Ambassadors, one of James' final three great completed novels.

The later Henry James can be difficult going, and I have found these books to be a taste slowly acquired. I would therefore not recommend this book to readers new to James (instead I would suggest Washington Square, The Europeans or the Bostonians). However, once you have acquired the taste for James his prose style, frustrating as it sometimes is, becomes addictive, especially for the deep insights into character that he offers and the ability to conjure up reality through a seeming haze of words.

For those who enjoy reading Henry James - and, like Nabokov, not everyone does - this book is very highly recommended.

This James novel is an overlooked masterpiece. I'm not entirely certain I don't like it every bit as much as the often praised "Wings of the Dove".

Art with a capital "A" is the subject at hand and Miriam Rooth (the Tragic Muse), Peter Sherringham and Nick Dormer all have their own way of coming to terms with the idea of a life given over to Art.

Favorite chapters are those on a visit to the Green Room of the Theatre Francaise and the magnificent Chapter XLVI.

Considering that James made his choice of a life given up to literature at a very early age, one can't help seeing this book as his apologia. And a grand one it is, too!

No upstate New York belles with fresh cheeks and fresher manners! No self-made Ohio bachelors in Europe questing for culture and perhaps an ornamental spouse! All of the major characters are English, though we first meet them in Paris. That's a welcome departure from Henry James's favorite theme of cultural bewilderment between Americans and Europeans. And it's virtually all I knew about "The Tragic Muse" before I read it. It isn't one of the novel normally assigned in college lit classes, and it happened to be the only full-length James novel I'd never read. Imagine my surprise! It's surely one of the best! One of the wittiest, stocked with the most convincing characters, about whose travails the reader might genuinely care! And yet the critics pay it scant attention! Well, so much for critics then!

I was lucky in my choice of editions, I'm happy to mention. The Tragic Muse was first published in 1890, four years after The Bostonians and just at the onset of James's futile attempt to prove himself as a playwright. Eighteen years later, James the Master -- sometimes referred to as "James the Old Pretender" -- revised the novel drastically, changing phrases in nearly every paragraph, assiduously qualifying and obfuscating its forthright vigor. Unfortunately, the 1908 revision has been included in the so-called "Definitive Edition", a decision that may account for the relative unpopularity of this very fine novel. Be sure you read the the original edition of 1890!

For one thing, the descriptive passages of The Tragic Muse -- the prose, you might say, that frames the dramatic dialogue -- are among the most vivid and pictorial to be found in James's writings. Appropriately so, since the novel begins with a scene in a gallery of the Paris Salon, and since one of the seven principal characters is a young Briton of the "political" class who yearns to devote himself to Art. But this is a novel dominated by dialogue, and the dialogue is so finely written that one has to wonder why James had so little luck with the stage. Each palaverer in the sometimes quite extended conversations has his/her own authentic speaking voice, even including the minor figures. Of course the dialogues are wittier and more lucid than real-time conversations could ever be, but they're therefore both more entertaining and more revelatory of the personalities of the speakers than any stammering verisimilitude could make them.

The dramatis personae:

*Lady Agnes Dormer, the widow of a revered Parliamentary lion

*Her daughter Grace, hopelessly plain and literal, making her name painfully ironic

*Her younger daughter Biddy, charming and impressionable

*Her son Nick, upon whom the family's aspirations for sustaining Public Greatness rest uncomfortably, whose uncertainty about his future as a politician or as an artist is the core of the novel

*Peter Sherringham, a cousin of the Dormers, an ambitious young diplomat, whom Biddy adores

*Julia Dallow, the beautiful widowed sister of Peter and thus also a cousin, who has inherited significant wealth from her dead husband, whose ambition to play a large role in society as a statesman's wife is one of the driving forces of the narrative

*Gabriel Nash, not a cousin, a college friend of Nick's, a dilettante of enigmatic habits, an 'influence' on Nick for good or ill, depending on one's expectations of propriety

*Miriam Rooth, definitely not a cousin, not even certainly of the respectable class, the daughter of a Jewish merchant and a fabulating mother who has raised her erratically all around the Continent, who aspires to be a great actress at any cost

Every one of these characters is memorable and utterly plausible. Henry James never exceeded the psychological insight of his portrayals of these very distinct 'antagonists' in the acts of Will that determine a Life; it's the agony of incompatible Wills that give this novel its passion. Encapsulated in the drama, however, there are also some profound reflections on the value of art and the merit of the artistic life, measured against the more pragmatic values of public service and production of Wealth. I wonder how pointedly Henry James addressed this novel to his pragmatic brother, the psychologist William.

Miriam Rooth is surely the most triumphant portrayal of a spirited woman in any of James's novels, a character I'm sure women readers of today will accept more happily than the heroines of The Bostonians or The Portrait of a Lady. Gabriel Nash is the prototype of everyone's least reputable college friend, half Jiminy Cricket and half Mephistopheles, the guy whose escapades make the best wry anecdotes. Peter and Nick, cousins, lifetime friends, implicitly rivals... in the end it seems to me that this novel is above all about their relationship, about the possibility of empathy and sustained regard between two men of such divergent temperaments. Two brothers, shall we suppose ...

There is not much tragedy in Henry James' not so well known novel from the year 1890, despite it's title. The young woman bearing the moniker of the tragic muse is ambitious. She is determined to be an actress, come what may, in the face of a seeming lack of talent. But we are not exposed to cheap Schadenfreude. James didn't do Schadenfreude.

This book is about crossroads. The heroes of this story have their inner conflicts.

Nick's conflict is between meeting the expectations of mother, sisters and the world, and pick up his dead father's political activism as Whig member of parliament, vs. following his own inclinations. The technical question of financing the election campaign is solved by his cousin, a rich widow. Why does he hesitate? He had dared to have other dreams in life. He was thinking of painting. He feels a bit overwhelmed by his imperious women, like mother Agnes and cousin Julia, the financier and prospective marriage haven. Nick hesitates to comply and rattles with his cage. His mother wants him to be independent by marrying Julia and her money, while his understanding of independence is different. On second thought, there is a tragic element in this: both know that and why their relation will fail, but they are stuck with it, for the time being.

Back to the 'tragic muse', the prospective actress. Nobody but her pushy dramatic mother believes in Miriam's talents. Hardly even herself, initially. There's a young man, Peter, Nick's cousin, who is something of a dandy with a diplomatic position, who fancies the idea of being the girl's mentor. She is awful, but then, she is attractive...and maybe she can learn?

She is one of James' many strong headed women. She is also entirely convincing, and hence one of James' best. In comparison, the men here drop off a bit, they are too conventional, despite or even because of their bohemian quirks. Maybe except the eccentric character Gabriel Nash, a flaneur and causeur against all conventions.

Peter's conflict is between his reasonable doubts in the tragic muse's future, his rational career interest in the diplomatic service, which wouldn't benefit from a scandalous passion, his growing infatuation with Miriam, and the prospect of a much easier life with the doting sister of cousin Nick.

Miriam's conflict is the choice between a risky acting career or a 'safe' marriage with Peter and a life as a diplomat's wife ... For which she might be entirely unsuitable, apart from the need to drop her ambition.

Nick, Peter,Julia and Miriam are first class characters, which make the book worth reading. Nash is for decoration. The supporting cast is a little flat, unfortunately. Nick's mother and sisters and Miriam's mother, and a few more are just filling material.

Are we dealing with very important issues here? All of James deals with First World problems. That's what he was. He dealt with them well, in his books. His life is a different question. Tragic Muse is one of his best novels in terms of psychological realism and plot development. Regrettably, it is at least 30% too long.

In THE TRAGIC MUSE, Henry James broached the topic of art in what was for him a new perspective. Rather than merely write about art in a novel, he attempted to infuse his own guiding principles about art into a fabric that dared both James and the reader to ponder the rightful balance between art, its devotees, and one like himself who tried to use words as his easel to divorce himself from his appointed role of artist-novelist and gradually meld into that of his intended subject--art itself.

James' three primary characters collectively represent the discrete corners of the artistic triangle. At the lower left hand of the base is Nick Dormer, an Englishman who is torn between a career in politics (towards which his girlfriend Lady Julia relentlessly pushes him) and one in painting. At the lower right base is Nick's cousin Peter Sherringham, who is similarly split between his annointed career as a diplomat and one in the theater. Both Nick and Peter have reached a level of contented stasis with this push-pull ambivalence, at least until Miriam Rooth, the apex, appears to force them both into some serious considerations about the role of the artist in society. Nick and Peter like art but for them art is not primary, but in their attempts to discover just how close to primary it may be, their approaching the burning flame of art threatens their primary careers. They are talented enough in politics and diplomacy to survive quite nicely without art centering as a distraction, but neither is talented enough in art to survive well enough without their non-art careers as a distraction. Into this mix steps Miriam, a young and beautiful actress. Nick and Peter call her the "tragic muse" of the title. She is the living symbol of what both men see as the apotheosis of artistic sainthood. They can aspire to achieve with great effort and only with partial success what she can with no effort and total success. But to operate on such a god-like level is deceptively easy. To act and become someone else on the stage is no easy task; it requires constant and diligent devotion to one's art. James suggests that Miriam has made an informed choice, a trade-off between success on the stage and a life off it. Miriam is so good at her craft that both men are discouraged from becoming the paragon that they see her as. Her success on the stage is her failure off it. The tragedy of the title lies in the tacit acceptance that the unreality of artistic success makes the successfull practitioner increasingly more tragic with each new laurel earned. Nick and Peter see themselves as failures only because they do not reach the heights of Miriam. The irony is that they never learn that the rarified air of success on Mt. Olympus is a debilitating one, and that the price that one must pay to wear that laurel excludes one from meaningful human contact back on planet earth. Henry James in THE TRAGIC MUSE makes this point clear to the reader even if Peter and Nick never catch on.

At the outset, it must be said that there is nothing particularly "tragic" - in the modern, rather than the Ancient Greek, sense of the word anyway - about either this book or its eponymous heroine, the aspiring and ultimately successful actress, Miriam Rooth. You will find nothing, or precious little, of the pathos and sense of loss, that mark, say, A Portrait of a Lady, or its eponymous heroine, Isabel Archer. I must say that I simply don't understand what the other reviewers are going on about here. The only character who can be said to be the least bit tragic is Peter Sherringham, who comes out alright in the end - as do all the other characters. And, yes, for those who have made the point, my copy of the book is the original 1890 edition, rather than the glossed over rewrite of James' latter years.

I think possibly that part of this discrepancy may lie in the pith of the book, the dialogue, which perhaps needs an English rather than American ear to grasp how absurdly comic it all is. It reminded this reader of nothing so much as the dialogue in Wodehouse, as did the British cast of upper crust, almost cardboard characters.

Further, the ending of this, for the most part, pointlessly tedious narrative is straight out of Conan Doyle wherein Watson tidily wraps everything up and tells us how all the characters have gotten on well after their crises in the narrative and we end with God in his heaven and all right in the world. I say "for the most part" because there are passages here - few and far between though they be - that do treat of art and the sacrifices to be made for it, although Miriam Roth and Nick Dormer, the two artists depicted herein, scarcely suffer at all. They are, on the contrary, after they've found their vocations - in acting and portraiture, respectively - depicted by James as artists formed almost ab ovo who have little in the way of harrowing doubts or misgivings once they are set on their paths, and, again, are popularly acclaimed in the conclusion.

The one aspect of this book which does reward the reader and to which the turgid prose gives justice without seeming pat is the general notion of art as a significant part of personality and culture. The best passage, to my mind, is that describing Nick Dormer's reflections on a visit to the National Gallery in London:

"Empires and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and every kind of greatness had risen and passed away; but the beauty of the great pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the ages had only sweetened their freshness. The same faces, the same figures looked out at different centuries, knowing a deal the century didn't, and when they joined hands they made the indestructible thread on which the pearls of history were strung."

Lovely. But this passage is the exception to the rule. There is good reason that this book has been omitted from the Henry James canon. It is that most awkward of things: a comedy of manners that attempts to treat of the agony and the ecstasy of art.

The word, I believe, is bathos.

I am appalled that this fabulous novel is only available new in this barebones edition, no intro, no scholarly apparatus. What happened to the lovely Penguin edition????? What is happening to literature?

The novel itself is a gem, the only (that I know) serious literary representation of the development of a theatre actress.